Moon Rocketeers Take One Small Step, on Isle of Man

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Twenty-two teams, each hoping to win a
multimillion-dollar race to land a homemade robot on the moon, are
gathering this week on the Isle of Man.

The two-day Google
Lunar X Prize
Summit, which begins today
(Oct. 4) on the island in the Irish Sea, brings
together team representatives, officials from
Google and the X Prize Foundation and space-industry experts.
Teams will make presentations about their missions and discuss the
competition's rules and judging procedures.

"We are incredibly excited for this event,"
said William Pomerantz, senior director for space prizes at the X
Prize Foundation, the nonprofit group organizing the lunar contest.
"The Google Lunar X Prize has a great deal of momentum now, with
an incredible roster of teams and with major agencies such as NASA
stepping up to become customers of our teams."

Racing to the moon

The Google Lunar X prize is an international moon
exploration
challenge to land a robot on the lunar surface,
have it travel at least 1,650 feet (500 meters)
and send data and images back to Earth. The first privately funded
team to do this by Dec. 31, 2012, will receive
the $20 million grand prize.

An additional $10 million is set
aside for second place and various special
accomplishments, such as finding water-ice
in lunar craters,
bringing the prize's total purse to $30 million.

Teams have until the end of 2010 to throw their hats in
the ring. The most recent entrant, a team from Alabama, did so last
month.

The Rocket City Space Pioneers, based in Huntsville,
Ala., entered the Google Lunar X Prize competition Sept. 7. The Space
Pioneers are composed of seven businesses, educational institutions
and nonprofit organizations and are led by Tim Pickens, chief
propulsion engineer for the company Dynetics.

In 2004, Pickens was chief propulsion engineer for a
team that won a related challenge, the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

Pickens served on the SpaceShipOne
team. The team, led
by aerospace developer Burt Rutan and financed by
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, became the first
privately funded group to launch a reusable, manned craft into
suborbital space twice within two weeks.

The Space Pioneers say they are designing a lander/rover
combination that could be used for commercial and scientific missions
on the moon or another planetary body. The Pioneers' lander weighs
about 440 pounds (200 kg) and the rover about 22 pounds (10 kg).

According to team officials, the lander
and rover, along with a propulsion module, will escape Earth aboard a
Space Exploration Technologies Falcon
9 rocket. The
propulsion module will then guide the lander and rover into low lunar
orbit, at which point it will jettison its two
payloads. The lander/rover will conduct a braking maneuver and land
softly on the lunar surface.

The rover, which will be tethered to the lander, should
be capable of driving at least 0.6 miles (1 km) on the lunar surface.

On the lunar clock

Of the 22 teams vying
for the Google Lunar X Prize purse, none has
yet launched a probe toward the moon. And the clock is
ticking.

Time will run out on the full $20 million grand prize at
the end of 2012. However, the competition would continue, with the
top prize dropping to $15 million, and with a final deadline of Dec.
31, 2014.